You
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Starting July 1, 36 million dollars of Wisconsin's share
of the opioid settlement funds will start to be dispersed
for the year.
Wisconsin will receive a total of 750 million dollars
over several years from settlements reached in national
lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that made
opioid drugs.
According to the CDC, Wisconsin saw a 4% decrease in
overdose deaths in 2023, down to a still staggering
1754 deaths.
Fentanyl and drugs laced with it account for most of the
deaths.
Here to talk about how the settlement money is being put
to work, state Attorney General Josh Collin, thanks very
much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
So is it too early to say whether programs funded to
date with settlement funds are helping drive down these
deaths?
Well, it's hard to know exactly how they link up to those
kinds of numbers.
But what I can say with a lot of confidence is that those
dollars are making a difference.
So when we prepared to get funds allocated for the
upcoming fiscal year, the Department of Health Services
secretary designee and I met with stakeholders from
around the state.
We held round table events and we asked people on the
front lines of the fight against the opioid epidemic to
tell us what's been working and where do we need more
resources.
One of the things we consistently heard from folks is that
funds are making a difference.
They're filling gaps where they're needed.
I'll give you an example.
Medicaid reimburses certain aspects of treatment for
people who are struggling with substance use disorder.
But there are parts that aren't covered that can be
critical like housing.
So getting those kinds of funds can help keep people in
treatment and can help make them more successful.
Now, let's be clear.
There are never going to be enough funds to address all
the needs that we have.
But the more dollars we can get to communities, the more
we can help keep people safe and save lives.
Because how hard is it to release and reverse the
grip of the opioid epidemic on this population?
It's been an enormous challenge for communities across
the country.
There has been some meaningful progress made and it's
important to note that.
Things like the PDMP and efforts to discourage over
prescription of opioids.
Those have made a difference and I think you're seeing a
reversal in the trend of opioid prescriptions which had
gone up dramatically over a few decades.
On the other hand, we're dealing with the impacts of the
pandemic and social isolation.
And more concerning, we're dealing with the impacts of
fentanyl which is now laced in all sorts of drugs and is
incredibly dangerous.
Does the flow of fentanyl just keep coming and can law
enforcement keep up?
Well, right now the volume coming in is enormous and
it's mixed in all sorts of different types of drugs.
So we've got to be doing a variety of things to keep
people safe.
One is we've got to make sure we are investigating and
prosecuting drug traffickers who are shipping these
incredibly dangerous drugs into our communities.
That's one of the things we do at DOJ.
But we've also got to recognize that people are
overdosing, sometimes not even realizing that they're
using opioids.
And so having harm reduction measures in place like
fentanyl test strips and like Narcan, which are going
to be funded through some of these opioid settlement
funds, is also helping to save lives.
How angry does the role of opioid manufacturers in this
scourge make you?
It makes me really upset.
You know, this problem would not have happened if it wasn't
for the pumping up of opioid prescriptions through
efforts of pharmaceutical companies.
When we filed our suit against Purdue Pharma just months
after I took office as AG, we laid out in our complaint,
our allegations about how this whole thing started.
You know, if you go back decades, opioid prescriptions were
incredibly low in Wisconsin and nationwide.
But through efforts of companies like Purdue Pharma to
really push opioids to promote studies that were not
actually valid, to encourage doctors to prescribe opioids,
there's been a major addiction epidemic that's happened.
And the impacts that we're seeing are still to this day
and significant part being driven by that.
In Wisconsin, do any of the settlement monies go to
individuals impacted?
The way the settlements were structured is that they are
focused on abating future harm.
So there have been some separate legal actions involving
the individuals who are impacted.
But these funds, based on the terms of the settlement,
are meant to be forward-looking in terms of preventing harm.
So certainly if there are people who are struggling with
substance use disorder who were impacted previously,
this might help them get the kind of support that they need.
But it's separate from providing the kind of compensation
for somebody who was injured.
On another score, as you well know,
Arizona this week arraigned false Republican electors
and alleged to be part of a falsely electoral,
you know, falsifying electoral documents.
What about Wisconsin's false electors who settled a
civil suit?
Will you be criminally charging them?
Well, I can say a few things.
So first, I think it is vitally important that anybody who
committed a crime with the goal of overturning the results
of an election be held accountable.
And there have been significant steps towards accountability
through the federal prosecution of former President Trump
that's ongoing right now.
A number of states have now brought charges.
At the Department of Justice, we don't confirm or deny the
existence of ongoing investigations and charging decisions
that DAs ultimately make are only announced when they're
happening.
But again, it's critical that anybody who committed a crime
to overturn an election is held accountable.
What concerns do you have heading into the November elections
about a repeat of the aftermath of the 2020 election?
I think it's something we need to be vigilant about.
In 2020, we knew that there were a number of threats to the
security of our elections.
And so we made sure to make clear to people that if there was
voter intimidation at the polls or voter fraud, that people
needed to expect to be held accountable.
And fortunately, in 2020, election day went smoothly.
I think a lot more smoothly than people anticipated.
Of course, we then saw significant litigation in the aftermath
of that election.
I expect that we will see litigation again in the aftermath
of this election.
In 2020, we defended the state's voters and their choice
for president.
And we won every single case.
But one of those cases was four to three in our state
Supreme Court.
Now, this year, the composition of the Supreme Court has
changed a bit.
And we're going to be prepared to defend the results and ensure
that the will of the voters is upheld.
We succeeded in 2020, and I'm confident we will again
in 2024.
But we're also not going in with any misunderstanding that we're
not going to potentially be in for a challenge again.
All right.
Attorney General Josh Call.
Thanks very much.
Thanks for having me.
It really just gets people right.
That civil lawsuit laid it all out here.
Sorry.
You know, one of the, you know,
one of the, you know,
one of the challenging aspects of my job is always the
inability to comment on investigations.
And so in most contexts, they don't get as much attention
as this one.
But it's, you know, it is what it is.
So I remember the last time we asked you that question a
while ago, before the civil settlement and all of that,
you know, you know,
you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
the civil settlement and all of that.
You deferred to US DOJ?
Well, my answers were meant to be consistent with what I said
before.
So the, it is, that is an aspect of it.
There's the US Department of Justice investigation.
I mean, you know, obviously there have been both anticipated
and unanticipated delays in the federal prosecution of Trump.
He was supposed to go to trial, I think last month.
But it's going to be interesting to follow that because there were
six unindicted co-conspirators in the federal indictment.
Normally you would expect that they're either going to be
cooperating or charged.
But I think it's pretty clear that they're going to wait to
charge anybody else federally until they've gotten the Trump
case because they want to do it.
You know, so Americans can know what the result of that case is
as soon as possible.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I mean, we pretty much knew that's what you had to say.
All right.
Well, thank you for having me.